Deidre Skye Brianbacks, a woman born on the outskirts of Manchester, she was a woman who cared for the planet. The Planet she could practically feel wilt beneath her. By the wayward ways of men. Those who rose to power on the backs of their fellow man, and then swept their arm across their breast as if they could command the world.

Deidre looked down at the broken man beneath her. He had been like every other man before her. He had come to power a boy. He was now leaving that power. He could no longer control it. His mind was broken by the ways it split. His body was broken by her own hand. Ten years she had spent on the sight beneath her feet. Ten years since that day. She had rewrapped him around her finger and had done everything, even break the finger itself to shatter him.

For it was he, who like other men, had grabbed the world by his hands in the attempt to carry it beyond the madness it had created in itself. He had had ideals and beliefs. He had had the power to make mighty powers crumble with a sweep of his hand. He had had the power to make women swoon, even those who had foregone the pleasure of their body, or the pleasure of men. He had had the power to take bits and ends of string and wire to forge glorious monuments to the mammal called Homosapien's triumph.

But he had long since forgotten the boy of his ideals. She saw that in him. He was not quite the man he had once been. He had fallen in love with his projects. He had become engrossed in the secrets of the universe. He had become awed by the splendor of the incomprehensible. He had become clever as fox in the arts of politics. For all the ways of human life, the seven acts we play as men, he had played them all with flying colors.

He had taken 10,000 men and women and children and forged the greatest, shining achievement of man to ever exist. He had built walls that made the Great Wall of earthen China seem like a sand castle. He had fought wars with mighty empires, merely using tactics and even children and barely lost a man amongst them. He had gathered the heart and mind and soul of what made man, man, and morphed into it utopia. In short, he had taken heaven by the balls and cast it asunder into the plains below him.

But he was not God. His name of Mogul Brianbacks. He had been born on the outside of a city in the United States, called Indianapolis. He had once been the child of a bigamist, and a poor girl who had been too young to understand the implications of her actions. He had once been an extraordinary chef. He had sneaked upon the salvation of man, and cooked his way into an after-life of the dream called Earth.

Yet here he was, broken minded, broken bodied, and yet still not broken in spirit. It was the thing she had loved about him, and she could feel, even now, the lash in her heart it caused to see him like this. Bloody, an arm missing, his legs ground like dust. His mouth parting and opening to spout babble at her from the two mirror images in his mind. His split personality. Yet within it all, she could see the man she had fallen in love. The strong and resiliant man who cared with all his heart for the well being of his fellow man. The one who had gathered 10,000 men and women and children and eased them from poverty and madness, into true happiness.

She turned around to gaze at the longing images he had kept in this room. His room of peace. His room of solitude. Where he collected the pieces that had chipped off and rebuilt himself. All around, were images of her, of them. Their wedding, days in the field, the day they had discovered what the fungal blooms were really doing. She even saw a picture she could not recognize. An image of her when she had been first crossing the sea of the stars on the Unity. How he had saved it for, centuries was beyond her. But his love for her was obvious.

Her eyes hardened, that was why she had to do this. For all of his greatest plans. For all of the eudomonia he had presented to the world, and joined hands together, he was a product of his creation. He was just as evil as his father, and as innocent as his unwilling mother. Both of who had died many, many years ago in the ashes of Earth, and yet still lingered within the soul of her beloved.

She turned again to look at him, and saw, not to her astonishment, the one and only Mogul Brianbacks, using his only arm to slowly pull himself up. Despite the pain she'd inflicted upon his body, and mind, and soul, he could find the power within himself to stand. Or rather, to pull himself up. He winced but did not cry.

She could feel it within herself, the Planet cried for his destruction. No matter how she had tried to reason through the pain of Mogul's betraying her, and the pressing desperation of the Planet, she could not forestall forever. It had taken ten years, but her own madness had broken through. The Planet, as a collected pysche, must know better than her. A poor pitiful woman who had been betrayed.

She took the antimatter-pistol in hand, something meant for executions. Leveled it as his head, her arms shaking. She didn't want to kill him. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and kiss his worries away. To eradicate the pain he felt right now. But knew she could never return to that. Not after seeing his questioning gaze right before she had missed his heart, and sliced his arm off.

Now, he stood as best he could. He stood there staring at her, already knowing her decision. But even for all his greatness she could see the wheels turning in his head. He couldn't fathom why. It was beyond him to be illogical. That was just his way...the way of his parents before him. Cold calculation with pure innocence.

In the background the sounds of rumbling and screams of horror could be heard. People were dieing as the two of them stood there and decided without words whether man should continue or not. For only Mogul Brianbacks had the skills and power to salvage man together. He had been planning to leave the destruction behind. To escape to one of the half terraformed moons. Where green plains could be seen for kilometers. Where the oxygen was just thick enough to breath, and mild enough to not burn or sting the lungs.

Yet Deidre could not allow that. She could not allow man to continue on with his madness. His ups and down of preserve and destroy. Create and wither. In her heart, she wanted nothing more than to wrap him in her arms and move there with him to that moon, and grow old together through eternity.

The loud ringing that clashed against her ears ended any such dreams. Such, foolish dreams. He stood there, a moment or two longer, as blood ran down his forehead, before he fell back. Dead before he could blink, but defiant to the end.

In those few moments sanity called out to Deidre and she looked, almost innocently, at the sight before her. It was then she felt the presence of the Planet leave her. And it was then the screaming stopped. And it was then that the rumbling stopped. In the calm that comes before the storm, Deidre stood up straight, turned around, and saw a single tiny mindworm there in the doorway.

It looked inquisitively up at her, as if assessing her. Was she worthy to live? Her sense of self-preservation was smashed into bits as she felt the psi waves assault her mind. She didn't bother to ward it off. There were too many. Billions, if not trillions of mindworms swarmed around her in a sea of psi waves. It was all she could do to keep from scratching her eyes out, or stabbing herself to death.

And in a moment, she felt nothing. She heard nothing, smelled nothing, tasted nothing, or even saw anything. She was simply no longer. Her body and mind torn to pieces by the mindworms.

It had taken a long time, but the mindworms had gotten the invaders out. Even destroyed their greastest enemy and ally, Mogul Brianbacks. They'd continue to do so too, to all those that didn't care for the fungal blooms and their orgasmic ways.